Jesus! (yes? - but that's another story), what the hell is going on in our schools?
I just watched a news report on TVONE where school teachers talked about being terrorized by kids as young as six! These kids are so unsocialised they behave like wild animals. The older ones (year 9? What's that? In my day we said 14 year old or Form IV.) not only threaten the teachers but taunt them with exposure and sacking if they raise a hand (or in the news report, a piece of paper) to the student. It looks like the stupid 'bleeding-heart liberals' have won (and ultimately lost).
So how do we have a situation where school teachers fear for their safety from being attacked by children for Christsakes (Yes?)? In my day I can't imagine taking on the scary nuns, brothers and priests without getting my arse severely kicked. At Marist Newtown the Headmaster Brother Paulinus used to throw wooden backed blackboard dusters at our heads if we were talking or not paying attention. It didn't cause me any ill-effects it didn't cause me any ill effects it effects didn't me cause ill any it... beep... sorry! The point is if we had kicked Paulinus he would have thrown us through the window. If we had complained to our parents or someone else they would have said it serves you right for kicking the teacher.
Maybe the old days weren't always right but there was respect (no matter how it was earned). Now we have no respect - in schools, in homes and in the workplace. No wonder we have situations in South Auckland where teenagers attack female shopkeepers. Bastards!
I just watched a news report on TVONE where school teachers talked about being terrorized by kids as young as six! These kids are so unsocialised they behave like wild animals. The older ones (year 9? What's that? In my day we said 14 year old or Form IV.) not only threaten the teachers but taunt them with exposure and sacking if they raise a hand (or in the news report, a piece of paper) to the student. It looks like the stupid 'bleeding-heart liberals' have won (and ultimately lost).
So how do we have a situation where school teachers fear for their safety from being attacked by children for Christsakes (Yes?)? In my day I can't imagine taking on the scary nuns, brothers and priests without getting my arse severely kicked. At Marist Newtown the Headmaster Brother Paulinus used to throw wooden backed blackboard dusters at our heads if we were talking or not paying attention. It didn't cause me any ill-effects it didn't cause me any ill effects it effects didn't me cause ill any it... beep... sorry! The point is if we had kicked Paulinus he would have thrown us through the window. If we had complained to our parents or someone else they would have said it serves you right for kicking the teacher.
Maybe the old days weren't always right but there was respect (no matter how it was earned). Now we have no respect - in schools, in homes and in the workplace. No wonder we have situations in South Auckland where teenagers attack female shopkeepers. Bastards!
9 comments:
You're not wrong on this one, comeinyourpants! Never the less, violence breeds violence. I think that a lot of these kids come from crazy homes. I always imagined (in my youth) that, in the future, people would be wiser (like Mr Spock in Star Trek). Oh, how wrong I was!
Maybe you need a big hollow stick with beans you can hold up and rattle?
Brother Paulinus was a cruel, abusive beast who belonged in prison cell, not a classroom. While acknowledging the problems of today, his kind are not the solution.
You obviously did not know br. Pauliinus as he was very accurate with a duster or the chalk ands I can't remember him actually hitting anyone. If you look at the statistics you will find the vast majority of us grew up to be useful members of society without hangups unlike today.
Brother Paulinus, my God, there's a horror story from the past. My first year at Marist Newtown in Wellington, what age would I have been -- 9, 10? Standing in line at lunchtime with towels and togs on a perfect, blue-sky, cloudless, sweltering day, waiting for the okay to go to the pool, Br Paulinus spied a friend and I exchange two or three words and for that heinous crime sent us to his classroom to await him and his cane. He was built like a bull, with thick neck and forearms, and huge hands, the fingers wide as club sandwiches. Reputedly, when he swung that whippy cane, he did so with gusto, put every ounce of his solid frame into it. Yes, I was petrified, and my state of mind wasn't helped by the fact that we had to wait the entire lunch hour to receive our punishment. Cruelly, the silence in the classroom was broken by the distant, delighted squeals of more fortunate boys now enjoying themselves in the pool, where we should have liked to have been. A ball of nerves doesn't begin to describe it. And then, at last, lunch hour was over and the big boys walked into class to mock us and tell us with many a sneer and delighted laugh just how painful the pending thrashing would be. Finally, the moment was at hand. Paulinus strode cheerfully in, chose his preferred cane from several in the corner, and whipped it back and forth through the air, creating a fierce sort of humming sound. The pathetic hope I'd nursed throughout the past hour that he might just dismiss us with a warning, died at that instant. We were definitely for it. He told my friend to bend over and after a couple of preliminary swishes, like a golfer testing his putting action, literally swung into action. Wham, bam. Very fast, very hard and incredibly loud. The noise of cane on backside seemed to fill the room. I think it was two strokes but I wasn't really counting because I was in shock, a bit like those unfortunates waiting to be beheaded by Isis. There was no doubt that it was coming, you knew it, but nevertheless it seemed unthinkable that it was coming to you. You were numb -- but only until you were bent over and the brute's cane had instantly created weals on your behind like a sure-to-rise instant pudding. It felt like a white light flashed in my brain, then the searing, red-hot pain kicked in and it was every bit as bad as the big boys had said. The strap or ruler across the knuckles from the nuns was nothing like this. I remembered the rule, which was to say: "Thank you, brother" for the caning. Failure to do so might well have cost me another couple of "cuts". I'd never known pain like it but somehow found the will-power to not grab my backside in agony until we'd departed the room and were no longer in the big kids' view. Having to return to my own class and sit on my throbbing ass was unbearable. It took a couple of days for the pain to go away completely. I could never understand how Paulinus could be so cruel to kids in his care. I'd never do what he did to a dog. First time I'd experienced just how mean some adults can be to the absolutely defenceless.
Yes. Bad memories. Paulinus was a cunt. He must have got perverse pleasure from beating kids - as you say 'in his care'.
I remember getting the cuts from him - 6 to the backside- for some very minor indiscretion. The 'cuts' formed weals on my bum and the top of my thighs and lasted several days. When I had baths the pain was incredible but I hid it from my mum as she would have marched down to the school and confronted him. Pity I hid it. This was in 1964.
Hey Anonymous.
Here's the link to another post I wrote that features that old sadist Brother Paulinus.
Stephen Oliver's recollections are good.
Just highlight and 'go to'
http://grumpyoldmanreturnsnz.blogspot.co.nz/2017/02/the-nicest-people-ive-known-part-1.html
Hello Second Anonymous (13 October 2014), your comment just got freed up on my blog as it's been sitting in the spam file amongst comments from Russian prostitutes, viagra sellers and various web phishing scams )if you ever revisit, I suggest you read a couple of other anonymous comments above.
Also, I did know Paulinus. I spent a whole year in his class in standard six and had the misfortune of being caned by the sadist when I was in standard five having had to be called into his class and being caned in front of the entire smirking standard six of that year.
My post was written in jest and, basically we agree that some strong-arm teaching didn't do most if us any harm and elements of it are sadly lacking today but .... Paulinus was a bully and must have had detrimental effect on some of those kids at that school.
My brother was so badly caned by Br Paulinus that he was hardly able to walk. It resulted in my mother going down to Marist Newtown and tearing strips off him. I don't know whether it made any difference to him but he deserved every bit of the tongue lashing she would have given him and, as far as I know, my brother never got the cane again, so it's a pity some of the other boys didn't let their parents know. The man might have been removed.
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